In Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest feature, Kinds of Kindness, a triptych fable starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, the director reunites with his frequent production & post production collaborators. Company 3 Senior Colorist Greg Fisher, who also color graded Poor Things, shares his insights with Post Magazine on the film’s distinct look and how it contrasts with his previous work with Lanthimos.

Compared to Poor Things, how does this film differ?

“It actually was quite good, but in a quite straightforward way. I would say Poor Things was much, much more difficult because it was shot in Budapest and involved two different labs, Ektachrome and different scanning methods. This was all negative color and black & white.”

Is it the cinematographer or the director that tends to call on you as the colorist?

“It’s a mixture. I’d say some relationships, it’s more of a relationship with the director. Sometimes it’s probably more commonly your relationship with the cinematographer. That’s who your first point of contact is really, initially. But, Yorgos is such a great photographer, and he’s very involved in all the details of cinematography. He’s one of the most visual and photographically-minded directors I think I’ve worked with.”

Can you comment on the look they were going for?

“Well, it’s quite naturalistic. It’s quite high contrast, higher saturation, but I mean more like film prints we used to see in a pre-DI. A lot of prints the people would see now would have come from a digital intermediate, and they’re not necessarily quite the same as a photochemical print from pre-DI. [They’re] a bit variable, I would say, some of the prints that we see these days. When you see a photochemical prints, they’re really contrasty and really colorful sometimes, and I think we’ve, over long periods of time, sort have forgotten how much contrast was in those prints, and how nice and pleasing that can look…So whilst we were grading, it was very natural — natural lighting, locations, but we just kept adding a bit more contrast, a bit more color and just kept getting better.”

For a deeper dive into the creative decisions and technical details behind Kinds of Kindness, read the full article here.